A cemetery found in Spain – described by archaeologists as one of the most lush Bronze Age tombs ever discovered in Europe – has sparked speculation that women may have been the rulers of a highly stratified society. 1550 BC thrived on the Iberian Peninsula.
Since 2013, a team of more than a dozen researchers has been investigating the site of La Almoloya in the southern Spanish region of Murcia.
The home of the El Argar, a community that was one of the first to use bronze, build complex urban centers, and become a state organization, is part of a vast area that spans 35,000 square kilometers. .
Research published Thursday in the journal Antiquity documented one of the site’s most disturbing finds: a man and a woman buried in a large ceramic pot, both close to each other in the mid-17th century BC. died.
There are 29 valuable objects buried with them, almost all of which belong to the woman, presumably between 25 and 30 years old. “Everything seems to have touched her silver,” said Cristina Rihuete of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Among the beautifully crafted items were bracelets, rings, and a rare kind of crown known as a diadem. A total of 230 grams of silver was found at the cemetery – an amount that at the time would have been the equivalent of 938 daily wages.
The prominent role that women may have played in society is echoed in other findings at El Argar; similar diadems were found at four other female cemeteries, while graves of women were later used for the burials of elite warriors, suggesting that these sites were considered places of high status.
What made this most recent find unique was its location during the first Bronze Age excavated in the region. Since the building would be used for political purposes, the power of the woman could stem from politics, Rihuete said.
Men were probably the warriors of society, as suggested by the swords found at several male cemeteries, said Roberto Risch of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. “It is clear that they control the means of violence and that they are probably behind the expansion of El Argar.”
The society, which flourished from 2200 BC, was highly organized with a rich elite probably supported by some kind of tax system. “In Western Europe, there was no such thing,” Risch said, pointing to the rest of Spain where people at that time lived in self-sufficient communities of 50 to 100 people.
By the 16th century BC, all the settlements of El Argar had been abandoned, apparently by internal uprisings. “Shortly after the woman dies, the entire settlement is burnt down,” Risch said. “And only when the Greeks and Phoenicians arrived on the Iberian Peninsula did we see something similar, either in architecture or in political dimensions.”